


Wonder Show: A Pidge AU

by rightbrainiac



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Carnival AU, Other, Wonder Show AU, traveling circus au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightbrainiac/pseuds/rightbrainiac
Summary: This work is heavily referenced if not copied off of Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby."Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, allow me to change your lives! Step inside Coran's Traveling Wonder Show! You've read about them in magazines, these so-called humanoid curiosities, this tribe of misfits- now some see for yourselves. We've got a gent as tall as tree, a lady with a beard... and don't miss your chance to see the Wild Albinos of Bora Bora! Behold the greatest act of our display: Pidge Gunderson, the strangest of the menagerie because she's a "normal" among the freaks, searching for a new beginning far away from The Garrison's Home for Wayward Youth, where Mister watches and waits. He said he will always find Pidge, said she could never leave... It's a story for the ages, but be warned: Once you enter the Wonder Show, you will never be the same."I'm confused about how I feel about this work, I'm excited, but I'm not sure how I can incorporate the gang of voltron misfits in this... oh well, enjoy reading! :)





	1. Preface: The Banshee of Brewster Falls

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really excited for this, also, I just got undertale because it was on sale for 3.99 on steam? And it's awesome! Maybe I'll make a story about Undertale? Would anybody read that? Idk. Oh well. Enjoy!

Wayward can mean a lot of things. It can mean lost, misled, unfortunate, left behind. That is how kids at The Home thought of themselves, despite their best efforts to live some other way.

For the inhabitants of Brewster Falls, wayward meant wicked. Dangerous. Trash. And that's how they treated the kids on the rare occasions they showed their faces in town.

Pidge was the only one who went in on a regular basis- she did the shopping and stopped at the post office for letters and telegrams. She rode the green bicycle and did not cover her long bronze hair, and she sang old gypsy songs at the top of her lungs, and she seemed (to the residents of Brewster Falls) like a Banshee coming to steal their souls. Mothers would hide their children indoors when Pidge came whipping down the road.

They were a fearful group of folks.

Pidge loved to torment them. And she loved to ride the green bicycle. 

Riding a bicycle was the only kind of freedom for Pidge. It was something she thought she'd always known how to do, simply because she couldn't remember learning, couldn't place the first time she'd done it. Like laughing. Or eating an apple. It was so utterly normal that it didn't even require a thought. Settle onto the seat. Push off, pedal, right left right left right. Hold the handle bars steady. Watch the road ahead, to avoid cars and potholes and squirrels, but don't look too hard at anything. She could almost get out of her body, almost pretend she was entirely somewhere else.

That was the freedom she loved. That was why she had worked so hard to convince Mister to let her take the trips to town, because it afforded her the luxury of time alone on her bicycle.

Only it wasn't her bicycle- it was the Mister's. It had been his since a Christmas morning once upon a time, when a little boy who would grow up to be Mister had tumbled out of bed and found a string tied to his left big toe, a string that he untied and followed out of his room, through the upstairs hallway to the stairs, down the stairs (unwinding it carefully from the banister), through the dining room, into the kitchen (such a long string!), and through the side door, which opened to find a shiny red Journeyman five-speed leaning against the porch rail.

Was he happy? Did he gasp with delight? Or did he stand there with a handful of string and think, They don't know me at all?

It hardly matters, now.


	2. Begin at the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pidge becomes a liar?? What is this sorcery? Sorry the chapters are so short and weird!

Stories came easily to Pidge. Lies came even more easily, and more often. The difference was in the purpose. The stories taught her to imagine places beyond where she was, and the lies kept her out of trouble. Mostly.

Pidge's first audience, for lies and stories both, was her father. Her mother had never had the ear for tales of any kind, nor the patience to listen, and she was long gone by the time Pidge could tell a tale. A lean, restless woman, Colleen surprised no one with her departure, and the family quickly closed the space she had occupied like the ocean fills a hole in the sand. They did not speak of her. If they ever thought of her, it was in silence.

And so it was Sam, her father, who listened to Pidge talk, talk, talk. Out the door, around the house, all the way to the woodpile and back, the sound of Pidge's voice trailed Sam like an echo. She had an uncanny way of matching her rhythms to his, tailoring her stories to his moods and whatever task he worked on while she talked. They were stream-of-consciousness ramblings at first, retelling of the fairy tales Pidge had heard growing from her gypsy tribe of relations, all of whom lived within spitting distance of her bedroom window and congregated nightly in Aunt Holt's kitchen on the other side of the vegetable garden. Pidge did not have to leave her room to hear them speaking at night- they knew she was there and projected their voices accordingly. She made the stories her own, chopped them up and clapped them back together in new formations, putting the enchanted princess in the loving embrace of a villainous wolf, marrying the charming prince to the wicked witch and giving them a brood of dwarfs to raise as their own.

Sometimes Pidge would have so many storied roads in her head that she would struggle to choose just one path. "Papa," she said, "I can't tell where this story begins."

"Begin at the beginning," he told her.

These were the earliest days Pidge could remember later. Trying to think past them, to drill into her younger selves and mine them for memories, she could only get as far as the view from that bedroom window, the sound of her shadowed aunts and uncles laughing, telling tales, and singing songs about women Pidge knew not to repeat in polite company.

These were the days before money dried up and the dust took over, before the jobs and houses were lost, before her tribe disbanded and went away like seeds on the wind, hoping to find a place where they could land safely.

As her family trickled away, Pidge replaced the stories they had told with stories of her own. She didn't like the feeling of their words in her mouth anymore; besides, the details began to fade, and it seemed her father only smiled when she told her own tales.

"there are creatures that dance outside my window at night," she told him, "and they are very fat. They have wings, but they cannot fly because their wings are too small."

"What do they sound like?" asked Sam.

"Like bees," said Pidge.

"What do they want?" asked Sam.

"To fly," said Pidge. "They want to fly, more than anything."

"What are their names?" asked Sam.

The only names Pidge knew were the names of her lost relatives. She had not been to school. She did not have friends or know anyone who was not her family. She was five years old.

"Their names are Matt and Bae Bae and Colleen and..." Then she stopped because a tear pushed itself out of Sam's eye, and the sight of it rolling down her father's face made Pidge feel that she had done something very wrong.

"Papa," she whispered. "It's not true."

"I know," said Sam.

"Then why are you sad?"

"Because our family is gone," he said. "I didn't think they could fly, but they did."

Pidge put her hand into her fathers coat pocket, where his own hand rested like a nesting bird. "If they flew away, they can always fly back," she said.

Sam shrugged. "Or we will fly away, too."

Of course Pidge thought we included her.

She was five years old.


	3. Circus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ack, finally a chapter that got to 1,000 words. I was getting stressed out. Why are the chapters in the book so short? What am I supposed to make out of 700 words a chapter? A summary poem?

A few weeks after Pidge turned nine, Sam and Aunt Sophia took her to the circus, to distract her from the empty houses and the dust and the quiet. It was Sam's idea, the circus, but it was Sophia's money that got them in. She grumbled a bit as she handed it over to the beaming woman in the ticket wagon, but even Sophia wasn't immune to the alluring smells of sawdust and pink sugar that hung all around them. Even she had been a child once.

They went to the menagerie at first, gaping at the elephants and one colossal hippo that bombed calmly into a large tank of water. Sam moved quickly, wanting to see everything at once, turning occasionally to his daughter behind him. Pidge stood next to Sophia and resisted the urge to grab her hand when one of the elephants extended it's trunk in her direction, the fleshy tip trembling as it searched the air.

"I think it's looking for a kiss," Sophia said. Her voice was so full of high-pitched, full of forced excitement. It made Pidge glad she had kept her hands at her sides.

When they exited the tent at the other end of the menagerie, they found themselves on the midway. There was a long row of booths on each side, selling popcorn and cotton candy and chances to throw things to win other things, Pidge knew better than to ask if she could play one of the games- Sam might be relented, but Aunt Sophia was against gambling of any kind and would have spent the rest of the day lecturing Pidge on the subject. Though it would almost be a relief to hear Sophia speaking in her normal voice instead of her false, cheery day-at-the-circus one.

Halfway down the east side of the midway, between the ring toss and the Beano booth, there was a long stage with a squat tent behind it. There was a podium at one end, next to the tent's entrance, and a huge sign above the stage that said 'STRANGE PEOPLE'.

The crowd was dense, Pidge couldn't see the stage, but she could hear the tinny strains of accordion music over the murmuring voices that wove their way back to her ears.

"What's that?" she asked, Sam was silent, and Pidge felt chastened. She had been asking too many questions lately, and Max no longer had any answers. Or had become, like her mother, unwilling to share them. Sophia- who was taller than most of the women in the crowd and a good number of the men, too- looked down at Pidge disapprovingly. "Nothing that concerns you. Let's go."

"But what is it? I can't see!"

A large man next to Sophia leaned down to Pidge and said, "You can't see? Well, that just won't do. Here, let me help." She was small for her age- it took no effort at all for the man to reach down and lift Pidge as if she were a bag of groceries and plunk her down on his shoulders. Sophia sputtered a bit, but she lived by "good manners above all" and couldn't bring herself to reprimand a total stranger.

Pidge's new found height gave her a perfect view, but even though she could see the figure on stage, she still wasn't sure what she was looking at. It seemed to be a man, but he didn't look like any man Pidge had ever seen. His head was very small and bald and rather pointy at the back, and his face seemed too big. It was sloped as if someone had grabbed his nose and pulled everything down to his nearly absent chin.

Accidentally out loud, Pidge said, "What is it?"

"It's the Pinhead," the man told her.

"Is he... What's wrong with him?"

"Don't know," said the man. "But he sure is funny-looking, ain't he?"

The Pinhead smiled peacefully as he played the accordion and gazed down on the stage. He did not look into the audience, and everyone stared and whispered as if he were in a movie screen instead of right there in front of them. Finally, he finished his song with a little flourish and, still smiling, shuffled off the stage, slipping behind a hidden opening in the tent canvas.

Another man stepped up to the podium. He was wearing a white suit, so white in the early afternoon sun that Pidge had to shield her eyes to look at him.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he called, "let's hear a big round of applause for Trigel, last surviving member of the lost tribe Dalterion!"

There was a smattering of hesitant applause, and the white-suit man went on.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, our main event. This is what your friends and neighbors will be talking about long after our humble show is gone from your fine town. You will tell your grandchildren the story of this day, and they will scarcely believe you, it is so fantastic. Seeing is believing, but you will not believe your eyes."

He paused and put his hand in the air.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Gallery of Human Oddities!"

Pidge looked down at her father, to see what he was making of all of this, but Sam wasn't looking at the stage. Instead, he was staring past one side of it, fixing his eyes on something far away.

Sophia tapped Pidge's benefactor on the shoulder. "Excuse me, sir, but I think I should take my niece to a more... suitable part of the show."

"Of course," he said. He lifted Pidge from around his neck and set her carefully on the ground.

"But-"

"What do you say?" Sophia snapped.

"Thank you, sir," Pidge said to the man, and he tipped his hat.

Pidge jogged to keep up with Sophia, who was striding swiftly toward the biggest tent in the lot. Sam floated distractedly behind her. "Why couldn't we stay and watch?"

"It's not appropriate," Sophia said.

"What's not appropriate?" Pidge's mind was swimming with what it was she'd seen, what the white-suit man meant by 'human oddities', and why Aunt Sophia was practically running away from the midway stage.

"The sideshow," Sophia said. "No more questions."

There was no better way to ensure Pidge's obsession with something than telling her to forget about it. 

She was distracted a bit as the circus performance began. Pidge had never seen such things outside of her imagination: girls hanging by their hair and turning somersaults, small stocky men throwing themselves into the air and catching each other by the wrists, massive tigers obeying the whip-snap commands of a fearless woman who stood inside of their cage. Girls riding horses standing up, bears on bicycles, elephants dancing like ballerinas. It was enchanting, like a fairy tale come to life.

But for all the whirling colors and motion and noise, all Pidge could think about was what she had not been allowed to see. And that night her dreams were filled with new characters- a man with the head of a bear; a woman the size of a zeppelin, hovering overhead; an army of accordion-playing pinheads- as she tried to figure out what stories might have been hiding behind the curtain on the midway, waiting for her to discover them.

It was barely another week before Sam determined that it was time to go. In the years to come, Pidge's memories of the circus would become hopelessly tangled with the image of her father driving away, so that it eventually seemed clear to her that Sam had gone to follow the circus. His distant silence during the outing, in Pidge's mind, a symptom of deep fascination with the midway, the menagerie, and the mysterious tent she had not been allowed to enter. As actual memories faded, they were replaced by dreamlike pictures of Sam as a lion tamer, a roustabout, a ringmaster.

Sam and the circus were united for good.

And then they both vanished.


	4. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, sorry it's so short! I don't know how to make it any longer than what I'm given in the book without having and or so instead of commas! Also: Undertale is amazeballs.

When Sam finally departed, her father said the same things her aunts and uncles and brother had all said. "I will come back for you." "This is not goodbye." "This is our only chance." And the last thing, was always: "Be brave." Someone always said that. This time it was Sam.

"Don't tell me that," Pidge whispered, and Sam looked suitably ashamed. He should have known better, she thought. He should have given her something of his own to keep.

"It won't be long," he said softly. He said it into the air above Pidge's head, like a blessing over her. Like a prayer.

"As long as it takes," Sophia told Sam. "I'm not going anywhere."

Sam made himself believe her. He kissed Pidge on the cheek one more time and climbed into his truck. Pidge angrily rubbed her cheek as the motor started, wiping Sam's kiss away, and then immediately regretted it when she saw his pained expression in the rear view mirror as he drove away.

There were no other children her age around anymore, so Pidge was the only one there with Aunt Sophia. She was the only one who stood in the road and choked on the dust that rose up behind her father's truck, the only one who cried dirty tears that night (unless Sophia cried, too, which was very hard to imagine). She was the last storyteller in her haunted forest, and Aunt Sophia was an unkind audience.

"Nonsense," she barked. "All that stuff about goblins and trolls. Your mind is ridiculous, Pidge."

"Don't you believe in monsters?" Pidge asked.

"I believe in bears," Sophia replied, "and I believe in the devil."

"Those aren't monsters."

"You face them down and then tell me that."

Pidge imagined her barrel-shaped Aunt Sophia doing a battle with the devil and an army of bears, and then thought better of asking if such an event had ever taken place. Even if it had, Sophia would never tell her about it. Aunt Sophia didn't believe in stories. She believed in practical knowledge, in cooking, in planting a garden, in survival. She believed in staying where God had put her, which was why she agreed to hold on to Pidge until Sam returned.

She had meant what she said.

She wasn't going anywhere.


	5. He Should Have Known Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... yeah imma make some pidgeotto oriented chapters here and there. maybe other characters? nah.. once again sorry for the short chapters, but the book gives me TWO FREAKING PAGES TO ANALYZE. What am i supposed to make out of two pages? HNGNNNGG

Sam had said he didn't want to leave but he had to. Whenever Pidge didn't want to do something she had to, it was because Aunt Sophia made her. So Pidge asked Sam who was making him leave, and he said, "Money," and Pidge got angry because money isn't a person, it's a thing, so he wasn't answering her question.

Then Sam went to pack up the truck, and he hugged her real tight and said, "I'm gonna miss you so much, little bug," and she made him let her go because she wasn't little anymore. She was nine, and he should have known better.

Pidge thinks Sam left because there was no more whiskey, and no more music at night. There was plenty of work to do, and they could have done it together. She would have helped, she wouldn't have argued when Sam asked her to do anything. Even if it was something hard like mending the latch on the sheep pen. But it wouldn't have been that because there were no more sheep, either.

She told herself: Sam went to find the sheep and bring them back to her.

She was going to wait for him every day.

She would be a good girl for Aunt Sophia.

She is going to learn new stories when Sam comes back.

And she is never going to stop waiting.


	6. The Apple Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is one and a half pages in the book! Yippee! *sigh* im so sorry these chapters are so short, trust me it gets better as the book goes on.

It was where Pidge did her best waiting, under the apple tree. The tree was not very big, and she liked that because so many placed made her feel smaller than she wanted to be. She was shaded from the sun and the rain there. There was a curve in the trunk that fit against her back like another body, and it helped her remember what it was like to be held, to be safe.

Aunt Sophia did not hold her. Aunt Sophia took care of her, fed her, kept her clean and dry. Taught her what Aunt Sophia knew how to teach: manners, churchgoing, and cooking.

There were always apples on the ground, with soft brown spots from falling and sitting still for too long. Pidge bit into one once, one that looked more perfect than the others, but it did not taste like an apple. It was hard and bitter. She spit out the bite she had taken and laid the rest of the apple back on the ground, bite side down, so it looked perfect again.

If she lay against the trunk of the tree and looked up through the branches, she could see only bits of the sky and the clouds passing over the leaves like a moving picture made just for her. When the road was too empty to watch anymore, Pidge had this other view to comfort her. When, after a while, that was not enough, she knew it was time to go back inside.

She was careful with her apple tree. She did not ask too much of it.


	7. While She was Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, pidge writes in a notebook, and i find this fact adorable.

Pidge started writing in a notebook.

"A partial list of things that happened accidentally in the year I lived with Aunt Sophia:

1\. A small fire involving dining room curtains and candles during an attempted seance to call forward the ghost of William Howard Taft.

2\. A disagreement as to the meaning of the word disagreement between myself and Miss Eugenia Throgsmorton, Head mistress, Sutton County Day School.

3\. The loss of an entire batch of newly carded wool, which was left outdoors during a rather exciting thunderstorm.

4\. The acquisition of a mild case of influenza, resulting from the waist-deep sinkhole in the midst of the thunderstorm.

And the following incidents, which took place in church:

1\. Daring escape by mouse from pocket of my dress.

2\. Similar escape by salamander- same pocket, different Sunday.

3\. So-called defacement of prayer missals, in which words were altered in unsavory directions.

4\. Unfortunate misfire of pea from pea shooter, leading to the removal of pea from Miss Eugenia Throgsmorton's ear.

All of the above were completely unintentional, not to mention unfairly punished."


	8. Broken Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg finally we're getting somewhere; have a longer chapter.

Aunt Sophia was a hard spirit. She had survived her life because of a stalwart, stubborn refusal to change. Some women are that way, no matter how many sons they lose in war, no matter how hard they must work after their husbands are carelessly dispatched by a hay baler, no matter how many troublesome girls they take in. Women like Sophia are great rocks in the sea, weathered and worn but never broken.

When Pidge first went to live with Sophia, she thought she would not let herself be changed, either. Pidge thought she would be in Aunt Sophia's house only for a short time. She did not know that her father would go down the open road and not return any of the days she stood at the front gate and watched until she saw trailing black spots from staring so hard. She thought she would be the first to see him coming, so she gave up climbing trees and writing down stories and doing all the things she loved. She only watched the road. Finally Aunt Sophia got fed up and dragged Pidge into the house, and she didn't stop even when Pidge accidentally kicked her in the stomach.

I hate her, Pidge told herself. But even then she knew it wasn't true. Aunt Sophia taught her how to cook and sew, and she let her read any book Pidge wanted as long as she spent the same amount of time reading the Bible, which was fine with Pidge because the Bible had more than its fair share of gory tales and intrigue.

Pidge once imagined herself as David, with Sophia playing Goliath, and saw herself land that stone directly between Sophia's eyes so that she dropped dead immediately. Then Pidge felt terribly guilty and washed all of Aunt Sophia's unmentionables without complaining once.

"As long as it takes," Sophia told Sam. "I'm not going anywhere."

And she didn't go anywhere. But Pidge did.

Four years after her father was swallowed in a cloud of dust, Pidge turned thirteen, and the old family traits were in full bloom. She was willful, stubborn, and prone to daydreams. She was clumsy. She was emotional. She was, in fact, exactly like her Uncle Sebastian, who had been Sophia's husband and the bane of her existence when he got crushed by a hay baler. "Head in the clouds" was all Sophia said to the men who came to tell her the news. She was not the least bit surprised to find herself a widow. Nor was she particularly upset.

Sophia decided the best thing for everyone was to install Pidge in a place where she would be safe, disciplined, and out of Sophia's way.

Like an oasis in the desert, there was The Home.

"Pack your things," Sophia said to Pidge. They had just finished dinner.

"Why?"

"I've found a better place for you to live. There are lots of other kids there, and an apple orchard, and a very nice man who will watch after you. Here. Look."

Sophia stood up, went to her sewing box, and extracted a thin slip of paper. As she pushed it across the table, Pidge could see a faint picture of a large house surrounded by bold words in news print. Words like 'BETTER LIFE' and 'CARE' and 'HOME'. The words smudged her fingers as she pinched the paper between them.

Pidge felt her scalp getting hot. When she looked up, she could see her apple tree through the window behind Sophia.

"You're sending me away?'

"It's for the best, dear. You'll be much happier there, you'll even get a great education."

It was as if her hair were actually on fire. She itched her head and said, "But you promised Sam you would take care of me. He's coming back here to get me. I'm supposed to be here."

Sophia folded her hands together tightly. "There's... he..." She paused, chewing on her words. "I will tell him where to find you. Obviously. And I am taking care of you. I have found a better place for you." She stood up, hands clenched as if in desperate prayer. "Now, pack your things. We're leaving in the morning."

I'll run away, thought Pidge. But there was no time to plan, and she knew only fools fled into the night without the proper supplies. She had heard too many tales of men mauled by bears, getting lost in the wood, sleeping their way into death when the snow caught them. She would not suffer that kind of end. She would not give Sophia that satisfaction.

A whole orchard of apple trees. Other kids to climb them with. A kindly man, watching over them like the Holy Father. Pidge pictured a friendly, wrinkled face, a snow white beard, a pipe threading sweet smoke into the air. A deep voice telling her stories, tucking her in at night.

Maybe it won't be so bad, she thought. And when she woke up in the middle of the night to Aunt Sophia yelling in her sleep, Pidge thought, So long, you old witch.

She didn't know yet: There are far worse things than witches. Worse than bears. Worse than the devil himself.


End file.
